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Re: gpl version 2 for cvs


From: Riley Williams
Subject: Re: gpl version 2 for cvs
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 22:09:51 +0100 (BST)

Hi Larry.

>> I was only talking about US copyright law. I don't know the answer
>> for a fact myself, it's not like I know where to look in the civil
>> code.

> Everything you need to know can be found at the US Copyright
> Office's web site: <http://www.loc.gov/copyright/>.

>>    Under UK copyright law, the opposite is true: If copyright is
>>    claimed for more than two consecutive years, then they MUST be
>>    specified as a range to be legally valid.

> Has the UK not signed the Berne Convention? The whole point of it
> was to avoid such gratuitous differences. (The Berne Convention
> doesn't require any notice at all, let alone a specific form of
> notice.)

I've no idea whether the UK has signed the stated convention, but one
point was repeatedly emphasised in a copyright case in which I was
present back in November 2001: If there is no notice stating the year
for which copyright is claimed, then the whole idea of copyright is open
to fraud. The decision as far as that case is concerned was that for
copyright to hold, the item must include a statement that includes the
most recent year for which copyright is claimed.

My understanding is that the following bash script prints a copyright
notice that is both full and sufficient as far as both UK and US law
is concerned, and also puts the software under version 2 of the GPL
(assuming appropriate definitions of the environment variables TITLE
and AUTHOR for the software in question):

   #!/bin/bash
   echo "${TITLE}"
   echo "Copyright (C) `date +%Y,` ${AUTHOR}"
   echo "Released under the GNU General Public Licence, version 2."

Note that under UK law, it is NOT valid to refer to a licence that has
not yet been written, so the fabled "or, at your option, any later
version" is invalid here.

Best wishes from Riley.




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